The Brazilian Best Actor contender on his beautifully 'complex' country

In one of Wagner Moura's favourite scenes in The Secret Agent, his character Armando Solimões suddenly realises he's being hunted by contract killers - then opens a door and steps out into a Brazilian carnival.

To the 49-year-old actor, the scene represents not only an "amazing" celebratory aspect of his culture but the emotional depth within all of us.

"He's being persecuted by hitmen, he can get killed in any moment, and he just gives himself to the carnival and goes with the crowd, dancing," he tells RNZ's Saturday Morning.

The Secret Agent - the first film Moura has made in Brazil in 12 years - is set during the country's 1970s military dictatorship, where the former professor Armando is being persecuted just for "trying to stick to his values", he says.

The oppressive censorship of Emílio Garrastazu Médici's authoritarian government didn't really end in 1985, Moura says, and in today's "very diverse and culturally unique" Brazil, there are still echoes of its history of violence, misogyny, homophobia and elitism.

Although the South American country that gave the world samba and football and happiness is "liberal in many senses", Moura says, it's still the most "socially unfair" country in the world.

"The difference between who has lots of money and the ones that live in poverty is huge."

Moura has been an outspoken critic of now-jailed former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro - an "obscure far-right congressman" who rose to power after Donald Trump's election in 2016.

From 2018 to 2022, he says Bolsonaro - "the physical manifestation of American colonialism over Brazil" - led a vicious attack on the country's art and culture.

"His heroes were torturers and killers and people that did despicable things against civilians. And also he followed the manual of fascism… The first people that they attack are journalists, [academics] and artists."

In 2019, Bolsonaro was "very upset" by Moura's directorial debut Marighellaand made it impossible for the film to be released in Brazil, he says.

"I was a very clear target for him because I was never afraid or ashamed of being vocal against him."

A "victory" came at the end of 2021, though, when, despite threats and with metal detectors at the entrance to screenings, Marighella debuted in Brazilian theatres.

"The film went super well and sold many tickets because it was supported by a big part of the population in Brazil."

Like Moura, The Secret Agent's director Kleber Mendonça Filho was a vocal, long-term critic of Brazil's authoritarian government.

Both men also happen to hail from Recife - a coastal city in the northeast of the country that's "the target of internal xenophobia", Moura says, and before The Secret Agent rarely seen on screen.

Although Filho is now someone that Moura loves and respects, he was a "very mean" film critic back when they first met at the Cannes Film Festival 20 years ago, he says.

After seeing Filho's 2012 debut feature film Neighbouring Sound - "one of the greatest Brazilian films ever" - the former TV reporter became obsessed with the idea of collaborating with him.

In 2024, the actor and director returned to their shared hometown of Recife to film The Secret Agent - a movie that Moura says reveals the complexity of Brazil's history and culture as it reflects the paradoxes within every human.

Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar, who Moura learned Spanish and gained over 18 kilograms to play in Narcos, was simultaneously a "very despicable man" and also just a "person", he says.

"I guess that's what we all want [to express] as artists, and that's what you want to see when you go see a film.

"You don't want to see, like, Disney characters that are either evil or good. People are complex, and that's the beauty of being alive, I guess."